Jane Stillwater is a freelance journalist, war correspondent, blogger, political Cassandra and author of "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle East," now available on Amazon.com. Her latest motto is "Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world."

Friday, March 11, 2005

Diebold is baaack: Is that why Arnie is so sure of winning his CA special election?Every weekday morning, I reluctantly get out of my nice warm bed, do yoga, eat oatmeal, listen to KPFA and bicycle off to work. This morning, Bruce Cain was featured on KPFA's Morning Show. Cain, a spokesman for UC Berkeley's prestigious Institute of Government Studies, was talking about how our very own Governor Arnie was calling for new California special election.

"If Governor Schwarzenegger takes his issues to the voters, he will lose. Democrats and moderate Republicans are not behind him." Cain then suggested that perhaps Arnie might be relying on his Hollywood star power to win this election.

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger himself has been confidently chirping to the press all this week. "I'm going to take my plan to the voters and I'm going to win!"

Is Arnie living in a dream world? WHY would California voters jump at the chance to pass his program? It's not in our interest. It is only in the Governator's "special interest". Arnold Schwarzenegger has consistently proved to California voters that he is yet another Republican carpetbagger -- out to sack California for the corporations. His vicious attacks on our poor sweet California nurses and his strident efforts to eliminate our lunch hours have made him VERY unpopular with all Californians who work, eat and/or need decent health care -- which pretty much includes all of us.

Despite the facts on the ground, however, Arnold appears to be dead certain that he will win any future California election.

Why?

Could it be that he too has friends at Diebold?

In 2004, it was so laughably obvious that George Bush jimmied the vote in Florida -- in some counties by a deviation of as much as 40.8 percent. "I have studied the Florida returns carefully," my friend the election expert told me last week, "and I have developed a fool-proof formula for estimating any Democrat or Republican ACCEPTABLE deviations from how voters might be expected to vote given the statistics of actual Florida voter registrations." His conclusion was that at least 312,861 votes were transferred from Democrats to Republicans using vote-shifting programs installed on Diebold and ES&S Op-Scan precinct ballot counters.

"Can you apply this same statistical analysis to the Gray Davis recall election?" I asked my friend.

"Sure. No problem -- if I can get a hold of the same raw data for California counties that Kathy Dopp used for the counties in Florida, it would be a snap." Boy do I eagerly await seeing those results.

Schwarzenegger seems just too cocky and sure that he will win any future California election -- and I recognize that look: George Bush was also too cocky and sure of himself before the November 2004 election -- like he knew something that we didn't.

Am I the only one who is starting to think that election fraud is baaack? And that Arnie, like so many other Republican politicians in the last decade, has also hooked into a good thing?

I wonder how much Diebold would charge to throw an election? Of whom does one ask such a question? I always wanted to be a Senator -- they get fabulous perks. Perhaps if I changed my voter registration to Repub (and stopped thinking like some dumb patriotic American), this could be my Big Chance too!